Daisy de Melker (1886-1932)
Daisy de Melker was a South African nurse who killed two husbands with strychnine for their live insurance in Germiston, Transvaal (now Gauteng) and poisoned her only son with arsenic for unknown reasons. She was the second woman to be hanged in South Africa. De Melker was accused of 3 murders but only convicted of 1, the murder of her son. The charges against her for killing her 2 husbands could not be successfully proven in court. It was William Sproat, brother of De Melker’s 2nd husband, who accused her in an attempt to have her claim to his brother’s will invalidated. De Melker refused to return a loan from Robert’s (her husband) mother, Mrs. Jane Sproat, saying she regarded it as a gift and stating that it was not stipulated as a loan. William Sproat won the civil case regarding the will, which ran concurrently with De Melker’s murder trial, and was awarded costs. Daisy withdrew from the lawsuit on the day Justice Greenberg sentence her for murder. William’s was hollow, however, as to pay her high legal costs Daisy had to sell all her assets and was declared insolvent, eventually being buried in a prison pauper’s grave.
Daisy Hancorn-Smith was born on 1 June 1886 at Seven Fountains near Grahamstown, South Africa, one of 11 children. At the age of 12 Daisy was sent to Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to live with her father and 2 of her brothers. 3 years later she began boarding school at the Good Hope Seminary School in Cape Town. Daisy returned to Rhodesia in 1903 but was quickly bored with rural life, returning to South Africa shortly afterwards and enrolling at the Berea Nursing Home in Durban. On a holiday in Rhodesia, Daisy met and fell in love with Bert Fuller, a civil servant in the Native Affairs Department at Broken Hill. They planned to get married in October 1907 but Fuller contracted blackwater fever and subsequently died, with Daisy at his bedside, on the same day they were due to marry. Fuller left his fiancée £100 in his will. Around 18 months after the death of Bert Fuller, Daisy married William Alfred Cowle, a plumber, in Johannesburg. She was 22 at the time and he was 36. The couple had 5 children, but 4 died. The first were twins who died in infancy. Their 3rd child died of an abscess on the liver and the 4th suffered from convulsions and bowel trouble and died at 15 months old. Their 5th child, and only surviving offspring, Rhodes Cecil, was born in June 1911.
On the morning of 11 January 1923, William Cowle fell ill after taking Epsom salts his wife had prepared for him. The first doctor who saw Cowle didn’t consider the condition to be serious and prescribed him a bromide mixture. Cowle’s condition began to deteriorate rapidly and not long after the doctor left, he took a turn for the worse. Daisy summoned neighbours for help and called for a different doctor. Cowle was in agony when the 2nd doctor arrived. He was foaming at the mouth, was blue in the face, and screamed with pain if anyone touched him. These symptoms continued until he eventually died. The second doctor believed that these symptoms suggested strychnine poisoning and refused to sign the death certificate. A post-mortem was performed by acting District Surgeon, Dr. Fergus. The cause of death was certified to be chronic nephritis (inflammation of the kidneys) and cerebral haemorrhage (bleeding on the brain). Daisy Cowle, sole beneficiary of her husband’s will, inherited £1795.
When Daisy Cowle was 36 years old she married Robert Sproat, a plumber, 3 years to the day of William Cowle’s death. Sproat was 10 years Daisy’s senior. In October 1927, Robert Sproat fell gravely ill, suffering severe muscle spasms and excruciating pain similar to the symptoms suffered by William Cowle. Sproat, however, recovered, but a few weeks later suffered a 2nd fatal attack after drinking beer with his wife and stepson, Rhodes. He died on November 6, 1927. Dr. Mallinick, the attending physician, certified that the cause of death was arteriosclerosis (clogged arteries) and cerebral haemorrhage – no autopsy was performed. Robert Sproat’s widow inherited over £4000, plus £560 paid by his pension fund.
On 21 January, 1931, Daisy Sproat married for the 3rd time, this time to widower Sydney Clarence de Melker, who was a plumber like William Cowle and Robert Sproat. In late February 1932, de Melker had travelled from Germiston to Turffontein to buy arsenic from a chemist. She used her previous name, Sproat, and claimed that she needed to poison to euthanize a sick cat. Within a week, Rhodes Cecil Cowles, Daisy’s son, fell ill at work after drinking coffee from a thermos that his mother had prepared for him. One of Rhodes’ colleagues, James Webster, had also drunk from the thermos and became violently sick. Webster, who had only had a sip of the coffee, recovered in a few days, but Rhodes died at home on March 5. A post-mortem followed and the cause of death was cited as cerebral malaria. Rhodes was buried at New Brixton cemetery the next day and on April 1, Daisy received £100 from her son’s life insurance policy. Rhodes Cowle was just 20 at the time of his death. His sister-in-law, Eileen De Melker, described him as lazy and said he was often unwilling to get up in the mornings. Another witness at Daisy’s trial called Rhodes “bright and conscientious” and “a real gentleman”. The evidence was conflicting, but either way it didn’t explain why De Melker had chosen to kill Rhodes, whereas there was an obvious financial gain in killing her 2 husbands. Rhodes seemed to have been under the impression that he was coming into an inheritance at the age of 21. One theory is that he wanted more money than Daisy could give him and he was becoming a problem for her. The most obvious motive is that Daisy simply didn’t like him and was disappointed by him. She pampered him all his life, but he rarely showed her any consideration in return.
By this time, William Sproat, brother of Daisy de Melker’s 2nd dead husband, had started to become suspicious and relayed his concerns to the authorities. On 15 April 1932, the police were granted a court order to exhume the bodies of Rhodes Cowle, Robert Sproat and William Cowle. The body of Rhodes Cowle was exhumed first, and was unusually well preserved, which can be characteristic of large quantities of arsenic. A state forensic pathologist located traces of the poison in the viscera, backbone and hair. Despite the fact that the bodies of William Cowle and Robert Sproat were severely decomposed, traces of strychnine were discovered in the vertebrae of both men. Their bones showed a pink discolouration, symptomatic of pink strychnine, which was common at the time. Traces of arsenic were also discovered in the hair and fingernails of James Webster, Rhodes’ colleague. The following week, police arrested De Melker and charged her with the murder of all 3 men. Public interest in the case grew and the media gave the story a large amount of coverage. The chemist from Turffontein, Mr. Abraham Spilkin, who sold De Melker the arsenic she used to kill her son, recognised De Melker from a photo as being “Mrs. D.L. Sproat”, who had signed the poisons register and he took this information to police. The trial lasted 30 days, and 60 witnesses were called for the Crown and less than half that for the defence. The Crown employed Dr. J.M. Wyatt to present the forensic evidence. Wyatt was an expert toxicologist and Professor of Pharmacology at the Witwatersrand University. The judge pointed out in his summary that the Crown had been unable to conclusively prove that Cowle and Sproat had died of strychnine poisoning. “It does not convince me, nor does it convict the accused,” he said. On the 3rd murder charge, however, the judge came to the “inescapable conclusion” that De Melker had murdered her son. The evidence for this lay in the facts that Rhodes Cowle had died of arsenic poisoning, the coffee flask held traces of arsenic, the accused had put the arsenic into the flask, and the defence of suicide was untenable. When the judge turned to pass sentence on De Melker, her face turned white but she continued proclaiming her innocence. Daisy de Melker, at the age of 46, was condemned to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on the morning of December 30 1932 at Pretoria Central Prison.
